Qal'a

The Citadel of Cairo was built by a lieutenant of the Ayyubid ruler Salah al-Din between 1176-1183 as a royal residence and military barracks. Over the course of its long history as the seat of government for the Ayyubid, Mamluk, Ottoman, and Khedival rulers of Egypt from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Citadel has been reorganized and enlarged in six major stages.

Among its extant monuments, the 13th/14th c. hypostyle mosque of al-Nasir Muhammad from the Early Bahri Mamluk period, the 16th c. Mosque of Suleyman Pasha, first of the Citadel's Ottoman-style mosques, and the 19th c. Mosque of Muhammad 'Ali al-Kabir indicate the rich chronological and stylistic spectrum of architecture at the Citadel.